Culture

Screams broke through the rhythmic voice of the khateeb as I ran out of the prayer in concern. The man’s hand lifted to strike once more as I instinctively lunged to block the blow. By the grace of God, my sudden appearance gave him pause and he did not manage to reach his target. This event marked my moment of entry into the clandestine world of domestic violence within the Muslim community. “Let him deal with the fact that you are no longer a blessing in his life.”

Amidst the flurry of eye-catching Western fashion designs and glossy high-street trends, Muslim women have become increasingly eager to wear trendy yet modest clothing. Throughout recent years, fashion businesses, outlets, magazines, and blogs catering to Muslim women in general and hijabis in particular have achieved remarkable success in Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike. Their success can be attributed to more or less the same reason; a lack of fashion designs geared towards Muslim women due to the false assumption that being stylish while adhering to a modest Islamic dress code are two incompatible aims.

As HEART continues to work with Islamic schools and educators on health education programming for their youth, we learn of many unfortunate anecdotes about the lack of information (or the abundance of misinformation) regarding sexual health that is present among Muslim youth. In our conversations with educators, we learned of a 5th grade girl who began menstruating and missed three weeks of school. She refused to confide in anyone, afraid she was dying. Another girl who was pressured to “try everything but sex,” unaware that while pregnancy may not be a direct consequence, she was exposing herself to sexually transmitted diseases.